


Fathers and Sons

by alienor_woods



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 20:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1277956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienor_woods/pseuds/alienor_woods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The child knew who his real father was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathers and Sons

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr askbox prompt from ladysaruka: (notdead!AU maybe? eh your discretion) Lucrezia x Cesare "I have long suspected my brother of having congress with my angelic sister." The child knew who his real father was.

* * *

 

Being a bastard is a prerequisite to being a Borgia, it seems. His mother named him Gabriel, after the archangel who spoke to the Blessed Virgin and told her that she would give birth to the living God on Earth. His mother and uncles are all bastards, his older brother, Giovanni, too. Yet the Borgias rule the Vatican, Rome, and every piece of land on God’s Green Earth that the Holy Roman Church touches. They cut down every person that dares to question them on account of their tainted blood. 

He’s asked his mother more than once who his father is. When Gabriel was very young, he dreamed that his father had been a soldier who had died in battle,  _Lucrezia_  the last word on his mortal lips. As he grew and studied the nooks and crannies of the Vatican, learned how to dart and hide lest his Uncle Juan hear about his sneaking and twist his ear, he thought that perhaps his father was a Cardinal. Gabriel had quite liked the idea of a man of God loving his mother so much that he forsook his vow of chastity to lie with her. Giovanni’s father was just a low-born servant, but at least Giovanni has a grave to visit. Giovanni visits his father’s headstone regularly to tend to it, and Gabriel went with him for a time, closing his eyes to pray with his brother and pretending that they were brothers in truth.

By the time Gabriel reaches five and ten, though, he knows that he and Giovanni could not be true brothers. Save for the dark tone of their hair, nothing about them is alike. Giovanni’s warm olive skin and silky-fine hair make him the target of ladies’ whispers on the streets. Though younger by several years, Gabriel towers over his older brother and his black hair falls to his shoulders in loose ringlets. His abuela pats his cheek and tells him how much like his Uncle Cesare he looks; his Uncle Juan says the same, but his words are acidic and bitter where Vanozza’s are fond and warm. Now and then, Gabriel catches his Uncle Juan peering at him queerly. “Nephew-Nephew,” Juan calls Gabriel when he’s drunk. “Because you’re the youngest, of course, little Gabriel,” he explains blithely when he’s sober, but it doesn’t keep Gabriel’s mother from glowering at her brother from her chair.

Gabriel much prefers his Uncle Cesare, and Gabriel knows that his Uncle Cesare secretly prefers him to his brother Giovanni. “I wasn’t half as handsome at your age,” Cesare jests, and Gabriel’s mother just laughs and rolls her eyes. His Uncle Cesare is as close to a father as Gabriel could ever want—Cesare taught him how to ride, how to hold a sword, how to shoot an arrow from a bow, even murmurs into his ear how to flatter a lady properly. Gabriel sleepily tells his mother that he wishes Cesare wasn’t his uncle so that he could be his father. His mother just presses her lips together and runs her fingertip down her son’s nose and taps the cleft in his chin.

It isn’t until Gabriel starts keeping his own women that he starts  _noticing_. Sees how low his Uncle Cesare’s hand rides on his mother’s back. Realizes how his Uncle is always in the middle of stepping back away from his sister whenever Gabriel comes around the corner in their apartments. Watches how closely they dance, chests pressed together and eyes locked while never missing a beat. Once, he goes to his mother’s bedchamber to fetch an earring that she’d forgotten. He passes her bed and—he smells it, is taken back to his hunting and riding lessons and he presses his nose to a pillow and smells his Uncle Cesare in his mother’s bed.

His Uncle keeps embracing him tightly even though he’s stopped doing so to Giovanni for years now. Presses kisses to each cheek, pats his shoulders proudly. Will wrap both him and his mother up tightly in one armful, squeezing the three of them together in a big mess. Gabriel’s Uncle Juan is always watching,  _watching_  when they do so, and by the time that Gabriel is twenty, Gabriel thinks he understands his Uncle Juan’s sharp and shifty eyes and his penchant for wine whenever his brother and sister are in the same room together. Because when they are, nobody else is—just the two of them, sitting hip-to-hip on a couch and heads tilted together in quiet conversation.

It’s almost amusing how no one else sees the closeness of Gabriel’s mother and uncle. His abuela will bend over the back of their seats and slip her face between theirs for simultaneous kisses on her soft, papery cheeks and comment on how she loves seeing her children together. His Holy Grandfather chucks them under their chins, even in their adult stage, and pontificates about the closeness of family. Even Giovanni doesn’t blink when his Uncle Cesare kisses their mother goodnight on the mouth—he’s always done so, after all—even though no one else ever has.

When Gabriel finally has a bastard of his own at twenty-two, a little girl named Isabela Vanozza, he thinks he finally understands God’s love for the people of the world. She has white blonde hair and her mother’s brown eyes and she’s  _perfect_. Isabela’s grandfather was very unhappy to find his noble daughter with child while unmarried and only sixteen, but the Holy Father has made their lives very comfortable and has promised to baptize Isabela himself.

Gabriel’s mother comes as soon as she hears the news, cantering into the courtyard with her brother at her side. Gabriel watches from the steps with Isabela in his arms as his Uncle Cesare swings his sister down from her saddle, and they both rush across the stones with smiles splitting their faces.

“Would you like to hold your granddaughter?” Gabriel asks, nodding down at the white, lacy bundle in his arms. He hears his mother say,  _yes, my love, yes_ , but when Gabriel steps down the last few steps into the courtyard, it’s into his father’s arms that Gabriel places his daughter.


End file.
